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July 9, 2013

Baird Grabs 7 Wells Fargo Advisors With $1.9B

The veteran reps come on board in Houston, where the employee-owned BD has launched a new retirement program

Baird said early Tuesday that it added seven veteran financial advisors in Houston, all of whom are legacy A.G. Edwards & Sons advisors recently with Wells Fargo Advisors (WFC). The advisors have more than $1.9 billion in client assets and focus on retirement planning for executives in the energy business.

To enhance its support of such retirement work, the employee-owned broker-dealer also announced that it rolled out Baird Retirement Management, a program to help advisors nationwide boost their retirement planning and investment consulting services.

“Baird reminds legacy A.G. Edwards advisors of many of the characteristics of what they loved about A. G. Edwards,” before it became part of Wachovia and Wells Fargo, said Jarrett Kovics (left), director of the Texas market for Baird Private Wealth Management, which now includes about 715 advisors and more than $80 billion in assets, in an interview with AdvisorOne.

“They have a strong memory of what they felt was most important” in the culture of their firm, explained Kovics, who joined Baird from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MS) in 2010. “We are different from A.G. Edwards, but the cultural similarities get [advisors] to the table … and it becomes a really good fit for them and the quality of their work.”

Joining Baird in Houston are Richard Ashcroft and Darrell Pesek of the Ashcroft Pesek Group; Greg Evans, Stephen Allain and Jarred Crumley of the Evans-Allain-Crumley Group; John Barnfield; and William Barrow. They will work out of Baird’s second office in Houston, which is located in the Memorial City district, where many energy firms are based. “You can’t find real estate there, since there’s been so much expansion and growth,” Kovics said.

In April, Baird recruited a team of seven employee advisors with about $770 million in client assets from Wells Fargo in Houston. It also opened its second office then and hired former UBS (UBS) branch manager John S. Hantak to lead the new location, which also caters to high-net-worth energy professionals and their retirement needs.

“Baird Retirement Management, which we’ve been working on for a while, could support teams of financial advisors with a retirement focus on technology companies in Silicon Valley or steel companies in Upstate New York,” Kovics said. “The resources emphasize marketing and other materials specific to retirement planning … it’s another attractive selling point for Baird.”